TODD AKIN and ‘RAPE ME’ Kerfluffle about Intent

“Rape me, go ahead, rape me, beat me.
You’ll never kill me.
I’ll survive this
and I’m gonna f/n rape you
one of these days
and you won’t even know it.”

Todd Akin said what he said. He claimed that women who are “legitimately raped” [two words that in no way go together in any decent world whatsoever] have, you know, ‘ways’ that ‘their bodies,’ um shut down and thereby the women prevent pregnancy during rape.

Aside from this mature man who has gone to Covenant Theological Seminary and been a shoe-in GOP candidate for several state elections, his imagining about how women somehow immaculately ‘avoid’ becoming pregnant from being raped, is right up there with the concept of immaculate conception.. gave birth, but hymen remained magically intact after, and one became pregnant to begin with without ever having sex. I swear there should be a DSM diagnosis for such projection onto women, making them less holy if they are sexual beings, and making them less than human if they are raped.

But also, this is not the first go-round in the press and culture about ‘rape.’ And what a person ‘reallly’ meant when they spoke about rape.

Once there was Kurt Cobain.

“Rape Me” was written by Kurt Cobain and Nirvana first performed the song live that year. Some people couldnt figure out what it meant. Like it’s good to be a rapist, bad to be a rapist, that the raped turn into rapists, or what?

To add controversy to controversy, Nirvana wanted to play “Rape Me” at the 1992 MTV Video Music Awards. MTV initially told the band it could play any song. But later MTV insisted the group play “Smells Like Teen Spirit”.

Hours before the show, Nirvana refused to play. However, due to concerns that the network could boycott other artists on the group’s label if the group refused to play the show, Nirvana ultimately settled on performing its then-latest single “Lithium”.

[But,] at the start of the performance, Cobain started playing and singing “Rape Me” instead… he said he did so “just to give [MTV] a little heart palpitation”. Panicked, MTV was moments away from switching from the live performance to a commercial when the band segued into “Lithium”.

Kurt Cobain conceived “Rape Me” as a life-affirming anti-rape song. He told Spin, “It’s like she’s saying, ‘Rape me, go ahead, rape me, beat me. You’ll never kill me. I’ll survive this and I’m gonna fucking rape you one of these days and you won’t even know it.'”

Nirvana biographer Michael Azerrad stated that “Rape Me” seemed to deal with Cobain’s distaste of the media’s coverage on his personal life. …Cobain said the song was written long before his troubles with drug addiction became public

So, there were several interpretations about what the use of the word ‘rape’ and ‘me’ meant in the song, with Cobain’s ‘explanation’ to Spin likely being the most cogent and true.

Thus, there are at least two people who seemingly meant the opposite of what they actually said/wrote…or what others thought they said/wrote. Akin and Cobain. Similar, sort of… in different same ways.

But oddly, Cobain’s lyrics describe pretty much what Akin is experiencing from his own party, for Akin, like shades of Tom Tancredo (R Colo) is clearly not a ‘favorite son’ of his own party…

Looking at his sponsored legislation and his voting record some would say Akin overwhelmed and intruded on many people who seem ‘not of his kind nor his affiliations’, and now he’s the one who is being ‘overwhelmed and intruded upon… forced’… “invaded”, threatened… told his own party doesnt care what Akin wants… to just stop carrying on and to do as he is told…

We shall see…
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The image is of Todd Akin and his wife.
NOTE: An earlier version of this post said Akin attended ““a Covenant Bible College” which gave an incorrect impression of where he went. The full correct name of his college has now been added. We regret the misunderstanding.

Interesting reads Dr. E and Tidbits, thanks….I am reading both of your post together… and please bear with this rant…..Both of your posts illuminate an open inquiry i have held the past few years; What is hate, how is it recognized, and what are it’s subtle expressions?

There is very little difference between what is going on with the Religious Right churches and organizations and what is going on in politics. The predominate message of the Religious Right and politics is not a noble religion or any kind of politics that will unite and create unity or prosperity for our country, it is disowned hatred.

We all know the blatant forms of hatred as in the rash of gun violence. Hatred also has it subtle forms that we see played out everyday within and without. And perhaps it is the later that is the most corrosive.

The ways i identify hatred:

Negative obsessive thinking shows itself in continuous rapid agitated expressions and planning on how to get rid of something or someone. When hatred is present, obsessive thinking is present. Manipulation, rejection, control of others are all attempts to get rid of something or someone we don’t want. Hatred’s mechanism is annihilation. to obliterate, to destroy it, to make it go away. The easiest way to recognize both the subtle and not so subtle forms of hatred is… ‘ The only way i am going to be happy is to get rid of that which evokes the negative obsessive reaction whose root is hatred…

Hatred is one of the greatest of emotional taboo. We have all been taught hatred is wrong, bad, evil — at all cost hatred is to be avoided because it hurts others and our self. Hatred is so relegated to the basement that it’s shadow has taken over the dream and turned us into a waking nightmare.

Our churches and our politics are fueled by hatred, yet this hatred is always disowned.

Let me name a few of the ‘ I am not going to be happy until this issue or group of people are eradicated….

Hatred of abortion, hatred for those that hate abortion….
Hatred of undocumented immigrants, hatred for those that hate undocumented immigrants….
The long list of the hatred of the Tea party, hatred for those…..
Hatred for the poor and uneducated, hatred for the rich and elite…..
Hatred for women, hatred for men…
Hatred for racist, hatred for rednecks…
Hatred for gays, hatred for those that hate gays….
Hatred for those that speak for the environment, hatred for those that speak against the environment…
Hatred for those that do not abide with ‘family values’, hatred of those that promote ‘family values’…..

on and on it goes….and it is not going to stop from the level that created it.. Hatred is not going to stop hatred simply because hatred is the most congruent of all emotions… Hatred hates itself… and because hatred does not want to feel itself, it puts it on the other in the form of projection, for when one peels it a bit deeper, all hatred is self-hatred…

Until we stop and own our own capacity and experience what i call the subtle forms of hatred… we are going to keep the spin of hatred going…

There may well be those that relegate me to the category of ‘fluffy’ and ‘ why can’t we all just love one another.’
In truth i came from a legacy of divided family hatred…..The fraternal side of the family was fully Jim Crow South, the other side of the family was Choctaw/Cherokee that had walked the Trail.

On Sunday evening the fraternal side of the family would gather around the kitchen table and tell the old stories….One of the stories i will always remember is one where a black family’s home was burned and they were driven from the county in the dark of night…The story went something like this… My family was sitting on the porch as the sun was going down as men on horseback rode by. The men had their white hoods and robes on to disguise themselves…The punch line, that got the laugh, was everyone knew it was the sheriff, the banker, and the judge leading the robbed riders, because everyone knew each man’s horses in the county….

My father was not a member of the Klan but his father was during the 1930’s…Disowned hatred scars the soul, hatred hates itself, he passed the hatred to his own family. As the youngest of eight kids many times i saw and experienced the scars from hatred on my father’s soul. He would strip my brothers and beat them until the blood ran down their backs for missing a weed while hoeing the cotton, or leaving a gate pen. As mixed blood children in rural America we lived something very similar to the African American slave experience with racial tension and violence being the norm. I do not write from a ‘fluffy’ sheltered life. I write from a place that seeped into the marrow in the bones, hatred never overcomes hatred at any level.

What Todd Akins said was rooted in hatred… then the blood in the water shark frenzy… beyond ‘blood sport’… hatred….how many levels; ” the only way i will be happy is to annihilate, to get rid of”….

I found the way out…. not by ‘ lets just love one another’… but rather by fully embracing my own hatred every time it comes up. I drop from the obsessive mind into the body and fully feel my own experience of hatred that just wants to get rid of something or someone in order to feel at better. In the attending to my own hatred of my experience, i do not have to place it on the ‘other’… What i know is that hhatred and fear are roots, they are not the ground. Beneath all hatred and fear is the true ground of love and peace. At that place one can begin to see that as ill informed and as hateful the expression of Todd Akin there is a man that loves the unborn. Many of us, including myself have a deep love for the mother and children and lean towards a woman’s choice, that too is our love. There is not an issue that we cannot find a way to meet each other and work for the good, if we meet on the common ground… Yet we will never find the common ground until there is the guts to look at our individual hatreds and call them home to be held in one’s own unconditional positive regard…

Know this is a rant and it may well be out of place for a political blog, sorry Joe and Dr. E….

I love this country and after a number of years of hanging out here at TMV there is a love that flows and wants the best to come for each one here, writers and commentators…. May we find a way through the long legacy of rancid conditioning that only creates greater and greater cycles of hatred.